Coconut
by wrytingtyme
Summary: House sends his team of new fellows out to do their worst at PPTH. They kill Cuddy. I call this a crack!fic because I really really hope what happens isn't possible. But mostly it's just a one shot huddyesq hurtcomfort with lots of wilson.


Title: Coconut

Show: House m.d.

Disclaimer: No they don't belong to me.

Summary: House sends his team of new fellows out to do their worst at PPTH. They kill Cuddy.AU where this is ep 2. House/Wilson Friendship, House/Cuddy/Wilson friendship, maybe hints of ust. drama/humor/friendship/tragedy/hurt/comfort/character death/character resurrection… in other words Crack!fic.

A/N This is a… what I'm going to call AU crack!fic with minor spoilers for season 4 01 Alone. It's what I thought would happen when I heard about Houses new hiring practices.

Lyrics are from the song Coconut by Harry Nielsen.

Coconut

Chaos reigned and Greg House smiled. There were 40 prospective fellowship applicants scurrying all over Princeton Plainsboro Teaching Hospital desperate to do his bidding. He'd called them in worked them up with the sudden death nature of their interview, assigned them bright shiny numbers and sent them out to do battle with the Man, the bureaucracy, the daily litany of runny noses and runnier genitalia that the mass of humanity thought doctors should care about.

"Go forth and find something interesting," He'd had to abandon his office for the lecture hall. There were simply too many of them to fit. "I want each of you to find, diagnose, treat and report back to me on something interesting." He'd smiled viciously into the strained questioning faces. A small Asian man in his early twenties raised his hand timidly. "Yes, number 37?"

"Excuse me sir, but could you explain what you mean by 'something interesting'?"

"Nope." He stopped grinning "Why are you still sitting here?" He snapped "Get out there and do as you're told. Last one to leave this room is fired." The stampede was impressive.

He hoped that by the end of the day attrition, patient complaints, Cuddy, deciding that a career in diagnostics wasn't the best choice, arrests (statistically there were enough applicants, he might get a couple) and general fatigue would get the numbers more manageable and he could move back to the office. His cell phone started going off 15 minutes after the kids had stampeded, followed closely by his pager. He hadn't bothered to answer them, just noted the numbers and text messages. At first none were from his little plague of fellowship groupies, he'd been careful not to give _them_ his number. But he could see that Pediatrics, and Geriatrics were among the first to fall to him, followed by internal medicine, icu and the lab. It was a half hour before he got his first page from Cuddy all it said was "what the hell?" The plague had hit the clinic. It was at that point that someone, probably Nurse Brenda, had decided he should share the joy and the locusts themselves began to phone home.

Not that he answered their calls either. But the texts were entertaining as hell. "wht is bst wy to treat hooves?" #16, "who is in chrg man is ngry." # 33 "plz I nd hlp think is deed. #40" this was the best idea he'd ever had. He popped a vicodin and leaned back. After a moment he slipped a pair of earplugs out of his pocket and inserted them. He'd worked hard this morning, he'd earned a nap.

He didn't wake up until someone ripped them out of his ears.

"Have you lost your mind?" Wilson screamed.

"I don't' think so." House blinked "I take it my plague has invaded oncology?" He stretched and massaged his thigh pulling out the bottle of vicodin only to have it slapped from his hand. "Hey!"

"Not this time" Wilson's face was flushed, his eyes red rimmed and he was clearly boiling with rage.

"I'm in pain Wilson." House said firmly getting to his feet and leaning heavily on his cane, "You know that."

"Yeah your leg hurts. That's nothing, " Wilson spat. He walked quickly around House and picked up the bottle shoving it into his pocket."At the end of the day you'll get em back. But this part you get to do sober."

"And what part is this? The part where we kiss? House raised his eyebrows. "Look I get the kids have been disruptive—"

"Disruptive? You really don't' know what's been going on do you? This is the part where you're _fired _House." Wilson said

"Cuddy isn't going to fire me. Yelling at me is too big a turn on." House raised his eyebrow and smirked.

"No, she isn't, she can't. I am."

"You can't fire me."

"I'm the acting Chief Administrator and the acting Dean of Medicine and I have a unanimous vote to revoke your tenure."

"Cuddy quit?" House was appalled. He knew she'd been a little fragile since the whole IVF disaster, but he never expected her to quit. He expected her to stay in that office of hers until she managed to work herself into an early grave and then be buried there. Quitting was un-cuddy.

"No she's dead. Your plague of locusts _killed_ her."

The silence stretched and House smiled. He couldn't help it, it was just too absurd. Fortunately his reflexes were good enough to allow him to dodge the blow Wilson aimed at him.

"She can't be dead!" He held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. "The Locusts couldn't kill her; there's nothing wrong with her. They were told to find something interesting to diagnose, bitchy amdinistratrix ittus isn't interesting."

"Yeah, well being hit with pair of charged defibrillator paddles wielded by an idiot can stop your heart." Wilson's breathing was ragged and he was shaking. "You did this House."

"I did NOT." House limped back to the table and picked up his cell phone.

"You might as well have," all the anger seemed to go out of Wilson at once. "Dear god this isn't happening." He moaned softly sitting down on the edge of the stage and burying his face in his hands.

"My thoughts exactly," House punched a code into the phone. "What the hell happened?"

Wrytingtime

The page read "Get back to the lecture hall in five minutes or you're fired. G. House".

Wrytingtime

And the swarm returned, looking, depending on what they'd been up to, bored, excited, happy, or miserable and terrified. There were four of the last group and House had been ordering them to the front row seats as he spotted them coming in. Wilson still sat on the stage looking dejected.

When the group was assembled House stood and flipped the chalk board to reveal the question.

"Who killed the Dean of Medicine?"

There was a low rumble of voices. A young man in the front row burst into tears. He was perhaps 30 years old with curly brown hair and brown eyes that girls probably said were "dreamy" when they weren't bright red and spraying out tears like a broken sprinkler.

"You," House pointed the cane at him. "Number 40, Talk."

"I'm so sorry—"

"Don't care. Wanna know what happened."

"Bu—but—"

"No buts. You killed my boss, you're fired. You're sorry, not my problem but I really need to know what happened,"

"Sir. I was there." A younger woman with pale blond hair cut in a page boy stood up a big number 33 was pinned to her front. "Roberts—"

"Number 40."

"Number 40, was in the ER, with us just looking for something interesting," she gazed up at House and flinched from his expression. "The ambulance came in and there were two patients on it, we managed to sort of… uhm."

"Steal?"

"yeah, one of em, and it was this guy and… we didn't have his paperwork."

"Uh-huh."

And we got him into a room and hooked him up to the monitors and he was flatline—so we charged up the paddles and hit him and nothing, and uhmm Rober—40 was charging again and Dr. Cuddy was suddenly in the room, and we didn't even see her come in, we were so focused on the patient and… and…"

"She demands to know what you're doing, 40, the brain trust" House's voice leaked venom "turns around charged paddles in hand and smacks her in the fun bags, she collapses. Now you've got two patients, one of whom is going to be very angry and fire you, when you revive her and a healthy woman in her early 40's should be revivable. _So wh__y is she dead_?"

Now 12 was standing up another woman with black hair and eyes looking defeated. "Jess…uh…. 33 and I did manual CPR on the patient, who we got back into a sinus rhythm. He's still in the ER. We really tried to revive Dr. Cuddy but she was flat line for at least 15 minutes and we kept hitting her with the paddles and---"

"And nothing, just straight lines." That was 40 sounding broken.

They others nodded.

House sat down on the desk and closed his eyes setting up his mental white board.

Cuddy shouldn't be dead, that was the first line.

A healthy woman in her 40's who has an accidentally induced cardiac arrest in her own hospital should not stay dead. House knew her medical history, (because he'd stolen her medical file when she'd given him the job and he made sure he kept it up to date.) She didn't have any genetic pre-dispositions to heart disease, she didn't have high blood pressure, she was off the fertility meds, not on anything stronger then aspirin. She walks into the room and---- what room? Near the ER….

"Oh god," He glared at them. "_Where _were you?"

Wrytingtime

Lisa Cuddy was tired and cold, very cold and filled with an overwhelming sense of wrongness. There was something urgent she needed to be doing. But she was sore, and so _cold_.

She closed her eyes and then opened them. It was dark, that wasn't right. And there was a blanket or sheet on her, and she was naked but the bed was metal. She wasn't in her bed; she put out her hand for the light and touched a chill wall. That wasn't right.

The place was chill and close and completely dark.

Then suddenly she knew. She flung out both hands feeling the narrow space she lay in. It wasn't a place anyone who was alive wanted to be. She was alive….

Had anyone been in the morgue they surely would have heard the screaming

Wrytingtime

"I can't believe this." Wilson said.

"Yeah, I got the point the last five times you said that." House punched the elevator button with violence.

"They were in the broken room for god's sake."

"Yup, they were using machines that didn't show heart rhythm because they couldn't show it, being broken. Someone should stick a sign on that door. "This shit don't work."

"Or maybe not send forty idiots out to wreak havoc,"

"Yeah, my bad," House and Wilson jumped into the elevator and hit the basement button.

"You know they probably did kill her" Houses voice was uncharacteristically quiet. "They admitted to shocking her "really a lot'." "And she's been in the morgue for half an hour."

"But nobody thought to take a physical pulse or use a stethoscope. They were relying on the machines..." Wilson tried to keep the hope out of his voice. There were times when he thought House's choice to live without hope, or at least optimism, the stupidest thing he'd ever heard. Times like this when the hope was thin and the outcome desperately important, he thought maybe he was right.

"The broken machines, they are so fired." House growled "who the hell forgets to check a pulse?"

"Terrified fellowship candidates?"

The elevator continued down.

The morgue had a large part of the basement to itself. In a scientific institution it was one of the few places where superstation hadn't been eradicated. People talked in hushed voices, avoided smiling or laughing, it was cheerless, which made no difference House could see to the dead people. But as Wilson continued to point out, it wasn't for the dead people, except as storage.

There weren't any live people there now. They'd all migrated up to the coffee shop and cafeteria to gossip about the sudden and inexplicable death of the boss.

So the autopsy bay with its dark steel drawers and gleaming cold metal was empty when House and Wilson burst in, empty except for Lisa Cuddy lying naked on the tile floor bleeding from her head and shivering violently.

"Go. Get a gurney we'll get her into the ER." House was taking off his jacket even as he spoke "Gimmie" he pulled Wilson's long lab coat off and the oncologist sprinted for the elevators.

House sat on the floor next to her ignoring the protesting throb in his thigh. Cuddy was cold to the touch but shivering, shivering was good. She was also unconscious which was less good. He ripped off his t-shirt and wrapped the jacket and lab coat around her pulling her gently into his lap so she was nestled against him, skin to skin. His thigh shot up an angry protest and he managed to fish his vicodin out of Wilson's coat pocket. He dry swallowed two and shifted Cuddy so her weight was on his left.

The cut on her scalp was bleeding sluggishly; he really looked at the rest of the room for the first time. There was a door hanging open in the refrigerated cabinet and next to that an equipment table with a smear of blood and strands of dark hair stuck to it.

His mind put the pieces together, it wasn't hard. She must have come to in the drawer; she'd know what it was or figure it out quick. There'd always been something of a vogue to "try out" the drawers during your pathology rotation in med school. It wasn't something many people did more than once, too cramped, too cold and too claustrophobic for two people. But you knew what it was like to be in that deep cold dark.

House's arms tightened around Cuddy, pressing her closer, Of course she'd panic and use to much force, forget that the drawers were designed to be easily escaped and fling herself out with enough power to fall off and bash her head open on the table.

"Can't do anything the easy way can you?" He muttered tenderly into her hair as he put pressure on the cut in her scalp with his wadded up t-shirt..."What the hell is taking Wilson so long?"

Wrytingtime

_"__Can't do anything the easy way can you?__"_

Cuddy heard someone saying. She didn't quite recognize the voice. It sounded like House, but kind, which was a frightening idea. If he was being nice to her then something was very wrong... She shivered, she was cold but she was near something warm, she pressed herself into it. There was something she had to tell House. She let her eyes open and it was light, which was good. Why had the dark been bad?

She shuddered gasping when she remembered. _notdeadnotdeadnotdead! _Her mind shrieked.

"Cuddy?"A warm hand was instantly on her throat pulse point and House was looking at her eyes with the fierce attention he reserved for his patients.

"Not… dead." She said teeth chattering.

House was pressing her against him again. Of course he was using his body heat to try and keep her warm. "Everything's all right." He mumbled "You aren't dead and no one is going to put you back in the drawer."

"Not dead." She muttered into his chest.

"Definitely still alive," he huffed a laugh his breath warm on her hair. "Relax, I'm on it. It's all right." Not that she believed that exactly, not with him being nice. But she was too cold to call him on it.

There was a clatter of wheels and running feet, Wilson was talking to House, asking how she was.

"Not dead, pretty insistent about it."

And then she was being lifted wrapped in blankets, they got that she was alive. House wouldn't let them forget. She let herself fade.

Wrytingtime

There had been quite a brouhaha when Wilson and House and the nurses Wilson had dragooned to help him had brought Dr. Cuddy up from the morgue. Several people, important people, department heads and board members, had wanted to consult, wanted to take care of the Dean, in short wanted to take over.

House had exercised his usual lack of tact, He found her, and as far as he was concerned she was his patient. He'd turned a deaf ear to those who said that it was his fault she was his patient, and he'd been tempted to smack a couple of people with his cane when they had gotten…. personal.

Wilson's tact had kept everything from devolving into bloodshed but only just. Now Cuddy was in a private room on the fourth floor hooked up to several, working, monitors, being fed warmed air and in general, coming along nicely for someone who'd been dead two hours before.

House and Wilson were in the empty conference room. Looking at Wilson's lunch, which had wilted until neither was tempted to try it.

"We could order a pizza?" Wilson suggested.

"Big one, Italian sausage and artichoke hearts." House said.

Wilson made the call.

"Do I still work here?" House asked as his friend got off the phone.

"I'm not really acting dean anymore am I?" Wilson shot him a smile. "If she wants to fire you when she gets better I won't stand in her way—"

"Traitor," House interrupted but without heat.

"I don't think she will. She's usually pretty forgiving when the patient lives."

"Yeah," House looked at the wilting lettuce in Wilson's salad. "Course she's usually not the patient."

Wrytingtime

"Earth to planet Cuddy." Someone was tapping her cheek lightly, annoyingly.

"House," Wilson's voice was resigned.

"What? She's my patient I can wake her ass up if I feel like it." House sounded grumpy. The taps on her face got slightly harder.

"Stop it." She muttered trying to twist away from him, keeping her eyes closed.

"You're awake. You can't fool me."

She let her eyes open and was rewarded by being flash lighted in them.

"What do you want House?"

"A raise, a weekend in Bermuda with Paris Hilton and an endless supply of hospital paid for hookers?"

"No, you wish and get a life." She let her eyes open again glaring at House who glared back at her. He looked like hell. His stubble was at its aggressive phase and his eyes were sunken the lines around them cut much sharper into his face. Wilson, on the other hand, looked tired but happy leaning against the door of the room.

"What's going on?" She asked.

The two men gazed at each other for a moment.

"Uh… what do you remember?" House asked sitting on the edge of her bed.

She thought back to… Chaos.

"Being really angry with you," she sat up pushing the button to raise the bed to a sitting position and glared at him. "What the hell---"

She stopped when House leaned forward and put a finger to her lips. "As of right now, you are on temporary sick leave. No yelling about work until you're discharged. Who is in charge of her discharge, Acting Dean Wilson?"

"You are House, for now." Wilson winked reassuringly at Cuddy who looked appalled.

"So unless you want to stay here until next spring. No yelling." House gave her an I-So-Win look and Wilson rolled his eyes behind House's back.

"Great." She grumbled when he took his hand away. "I remember a screaming horde of fellowship applicants. I remember wanting to kill you." She said all this at normal volume, but her enunciation was ferocious. "I remember going into the broken room to chase them out."

She faltered the next thing she remembered was the dark and the cold. Various machines started to beep.

"Then you came too in a drawer in the morgue, forgot they open from the inside, panicked and bashed your way out and into a mild concussion, mixed with mild to moderate hypothermia all of which was complicated by your previous close encounter with defibrillator paddles, that, also weren't working and therefore not hitting you with the amount of juice the idiots thought they were." House gave her a long attentive look. "You are staying here overnight. Tomorrow, after _I'm_ satisfied that your heart hasn't been too insulted you will be released to relax for the weekend. "

"Cardiology isn't your specialty House." Cuddy said mildly after a long moment of thought. Hearing what he said and didn't say.

"Finders keepers," He said with a shrug.

Cuddy looked at Wilson.

"You don't want to know what Singh said to him, you _really_ don't want to know what he said back." Wilson ambled over to the bed and dropped a casual kiss on her hair. "Since you aren't going to kill him just yet I should run. I have to console Dr. Snow he thought he was going to get your parking space at last. I'll see ya tomorrow." He shot a grin at House, who was glaring at him, as he left.

House didn't speak for a minute, just watched the monitors.

"House," She looked at him speculatively from under her lashes."I'll give you a week off clinic duty if you let me go home tonight."

"You mean in addition to the month you've already promised me?"

"I did not!"

"Ah ah ah no yelling!" he said shaking a finger at her. "It was strongly implied when you asked me to spread the word about your not being dead that there was a month off the clinic in my future."

Cuddy hesitated; a month off clinic was a fairly miniscule favor, considering what he'd done. No one else had bothered to question her death. If House hadn't come looking for her she'd probably have been dead of hypothermia by the time she was found. Plus he was watching her again, trying to read her thoughts, which she hated... There were too many things she never wanted him to know.

"Make it two months if you let me go home tonight?"

He laughed "Tempting but no. the nurses will be by shortly with your supper and pills, eat the food, swallow the pills don't argue with anyone and I'll see you in the morning."

He pressed her hand briefly and then grabbed his cane and limped to the door. She thought she heard him humming under his breath, and she recognized the tune.

"_Put the lime in the coconut and drink 'em bot' up,_

_Put the lime in the coconut and call me in the morning. _

_Yes, you call me in the morning, You call me in the morning,_

_I'll tell you what to do….."_


End file.
